Abstract
An age-related ‘positivity’ effect has been identified, in which older adults show an information-processing bias towards positive emotional items in attention and memory. In the present study, we examined this positivity bias by using a novel paradigm in which emotional and neutral distractors were presented along with emotionally valenced targets. Thirty-five older and 37 younger adults were asked during encoding to attend to emotional targets paired with distractors that were either neutral or opposite in valence to the target. Pupillary responses were recorded during initial encoding as well as a later incidental recognition task. Memory and pupillary responses for negative items were not affected by the valence of distractors, suggesting that positive distractors did not automatically attract older adults’ attention while they were encoding negative targets. Additionally, the pupil dilation to negative items mediated the relation between age and positivity in memory. Overall, memory and pupillary responses provide converging support for a cognitive control account of positivity effects in late adulthood and suggest a link between attentional processes and the memory positivity effect.
Highlights
A substantial body of evidence shows age-related decline in many cognitive domains, including speed of processing, memory, and attention [1]
Simple effects analysis revealed that fixation ratios were larger when negative items were presented with positive distractors than with neutral distractors, t (68) = 5.52, p < .01, d = 1.33
These results suggest that both age groups fixated more on the negative targets when they were presented with positive distractors but the fixation ratio for positive targets was not influenced by the valence of the distractors
Summary
A substantial body of evidence shows age-related decline in many cognitive domains, including speed of processing, memory, and attention [1]. If the positivity effect relies on effortful control, older adults should show equivalent pupil dilation when processing negative targets in the presence of positive or neutral distractors. The automaticity account predicts that older adults might show larger pupillary responses when processing negative targets in the presence of positive relative to neutral distractors (if positive distractors automatically capture attention and thereby require older adults to exert effortful control over their involuntary tendency to attend to the positive as they attempt to remain focused on the negative targets). People might process the positive information more thoroughly, or alternatively they might engage in effortful suppression processes when attending to negative information In light of these possibilities, either decreased or increased pupil dilation for the negative items may emerge for older adults, irrespective of the distractors’ valence. If enhanced pupillary responses to positive items mediate the memory positivity effect, this would suggest that older adults may be trying to enhance the encoding of positive items
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